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recruitment centre. The hours were shorter and the money better than he was accustomed to. He bought a new suit and developed a military air—Lucy asked him back into the dining-room, and started referring to him as ‘your cousin’, and not ‘the lodger’. He shouted at Judith if the soup was not to his liking, and the standard of food improved amazingly in spite of the shortages brought about by the war.
    Judith lowered and glowered, but did not hand in her notice. No one bothered to wonder why.
    Henry became something of a father to the girls: inspecting their nails for dirt and their hair for tangles before they left for school, as if they were very young children and not accustomed to caring for themselves.
    Hilda’s sallow plainness was gone. She was sultry, willowy and intense, and kept her eyes cast down, fixed upon her Greek translation.
    Lucy had lately seemed indifferent to the girls’ behaviour and appearance: she became secretive, hiding underwear and plates of food about the house for no apparent reason. With Henry’s return to the upstairs part of the house, she became brighter and brisker; even went out on occasion to bridge parties: took the girls to the cinema on Saturday afternoons, and became quite animated and vociferous about the lipsticked girls who hung about the army camps.
    Perhaps Henry visited her room by night: perhaps not. If he did, by the morning she had wiped it from her memory. Perhaps he crept to the attics and Judith’s hard bed. Perhaps not.
    Hilda and Patricia were instructed to come straight home after school, for fear of licentious soldiery.
    Lucy began to hoard. The cellar was full of rancid butter, mouldy flour, rusty tins—anything. Why and how she did it no one knew.
    ‘A brave little woman,’ said the vicar. ‘So many of our women are now left alone.’ And so they were. Those who in peacetime were expected to need male protection, in wartime were assumed to be able to manage perfectly well. And so they did.
    ‘Judith’s a very funny shape,’ said Patricia to her mother. ‘Like Peggy the cat when she was having kittens, only upright.’
    When Judith brought in the paste sandwiches for tea Lucy stared at her for a little and then rose and followed her to the kitchen.
    Patricia heard raised voices. After some minutes Lucy returned and sent Patricia to fetch the vicar.
    A maid ushered Patricia in to the vicarage study. Mrs. Allbright had lately died. The children had been sent to boarding school. The house was cheerless: the vicar’s study darkened—the blackout curtains were still in place, although outside the sun blazed. The vicar sat, as if puzzled, at his desk.
    ‘Can you come?’ asked Patricia. ‘Mother needs you.’
    ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Nobody needs me,’ said the vicar. Slowly, he unbuttoned his trouser fly and watched, as if with amazement, while his penis rose of its own volition and stood pointing towards heaven. It seemed he did not know what to make of it: nor, indeed, did Patricia. She was still out of breath from running. Something terrible had happened at home, and something terrible was happening here. As they both watched, the strange pillar of mottled flesh decreased, shrunk and wilted. Tears stood in the vicar’s eyes.
    ‘I do miss her,’ he said, confidingly. ‘You’ve no idea.’ He buttoned his fly.
    ‘Good heavens,’ he said, blinking at Patricia. ‘I’d no idea there was anyone there.’
    ‘Vermin,’ said the vicar, as they walked back together to Holden Road, to confront Judith’s sin. ‘Vermin.’
    Nazi planes, on their way back from bombing raids, would offload any remaining bombs over the towns of the channel coast, and occasionally shoot up streets and playgrounds with the last of their ammunition. The rattle of ack-ack guns was constantly in their ears.
    Judith was sent away. Henry left too. Lucy roamed the house. She seldom slept. Patricia found it difficult to believe in the reality of the world, so